


the hearsay

by PinkHydrangea



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Flirting, Worldbuilding, a lesbian and a bisexual walk into a tearoom, mostly flirting and drawing some parallels between the two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkHydrangea/pseuds/PinkHydrangea
Summary: This little tea party is the product of Tatiana finding out that Sonya, too, is Rigelian. Sonya thinks they have little else in common, but that one fact alone was enough to make the girl—perhaps a smidge hastily—invite her over for a chat.





	the hearsay

**Author's Note:**

> commission for my friend Nick!! he wanted some Sonya and Tatiana interactions with a hearty dash of Gay, which im always happy to provide, especially because Sonya and Tatiana were two characters i'd been wanting to write together for a long while, THANKS NICK

The girl is beautiful, Sonya thinks. She has heard fairy tales of a woman who was born from seafoam; the sea, given mortal form and life by the gods. If that story were true, Sonya believes that this girl is what that woman would look like. Her hair is the color of the calm sea at the first light of a spring morning, a mass of curls and waves that move like the crashing tide. Her skin is smooth, soft, beautiful, her lips round, a perfect pink that Sonya would like to have pressed against hers. Her eyes are a color that she can’t quite pin down; gray, sometimes, and then a little more green at others.

Sonya would like nothing more than to kiss her.

But she’s married.

Sigh.

“D-do you like kvass?” Tatiana asks from the kitchen area. She looks adorable, a perfect picture of quaint domesticity in her long skirt and apron, and Sonya’s heart melts. She also looks nervous, wringing her hands between tasks and anxiously looking over her shoulder. “I mean, how long has it been since you had Rigelian drink?”

That’s right. This little tea party is the product of Tatiana finding out that Sonya, too, is Rigelian. Sonya thinks they have little else in common, but that one fact alone was enough to make the girl—perhaps a smidge hastily—invite her over for a chat. She thinks that poor Tatiana must be a little anxious in the castle, where most of the residents are Zofian, so to find someone of her own nationality must be a relief.

Besides that venture into Rigel during the war, however, Sonya hasn’t been to her homeland in years and years. She’s been stuck in Zofia, doing Grieth’s dirty work and finding every poor witch she could find. And Zofia means no Rigelian food or drink.

“I remember being fond of it,” Sonya replies. She leans back in her chair, watching with amusement while Tatiana puts things on a tray. “You tremble so much. Frightened I’ll gobble you up?”

“O-oh, no!” she squeaks in response. She finishes putting the last plate of tarts—vatrushka, Sonya notes with interest—on the tray before coming to the table. Her face is a little pink, and she doesn’t meet Sonya’s eyes as she lightly puts her glass of kvass in front of her. “I- I just- You’re so pretty, if you don’t mind my saying.”

Sonya struggles to keep her eyebrows from shooting straight into her hairline at the statement, but keeps it under control and smiles cooly. “Well, you are quite lovely yourself. I don’t think I should mind if a beautiful woman calls me ‘pretty.’ In fact, I like nothing more.”

“Oh, good!” Tatiana sighs and sits down in the opposite chair. “Sometimes I don’t know how another woman will react if I say that…”

This sweet little girl might be married to a man, but Sonya is starting to think that she’s not really as straight as an arrow despite the fact. She doesn’t have any hope or chance of being successful with it (Sonya has seen the way Tatiana interacts with General Ezekiel; the “secret” embraces in the hallways, the mutual fussing and care, those surprisingly cute kisses he gives her palms before they part), but a little flirting never hurt anyone.

“Call me beautiful all you want,” she invites. “You make me blush, darling. I just _adore_ sweet little things like you.”

Tatiana blushes a little deeper, twirling a curl of hair around her finger.

Oh, yeah. This one is as straight as a circle.

They eat, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable or awkward. Sonya is glad to have a get-together with someone who doesn’t chatter nonstop, nor expect her to do the same. She likes the silence, because it gives her the opportunity to observe little things, like how Tatiana takes large bites of the tarts that aren’t considered proper for a lady, how cute the flush on her cheeks is, or how soft her hands look aside from the callouses.

That reminds Sonya.

“You’re a cleric, aren’t you?” she asks. “That’s what the hearsay is.”

“Me?” Tatiana asks, as if there is anybody else in the room with them. “Oh, yes, I am. I’m just from a small little church in the west of Rigel. Right on the coast, you see.”

Sonya chews the inside of her cheek as she reaches for another tart. “Were you located in the north or south?”

This is very important; every Rigelian knows that after Halcyon was crudely evicted from his position as High Priest, the Duma Faithful took charge of most churches in the country, stationed themselves in the east in particular, and set up their headquarters in the north of the country. The remaining Halcyonists? Forced to flee to the south, far from their best chapels and ornate cathedrals, where they hid themselves in tiny churches, far from Jedah’s wrath.

If this girl is a northern cleric, then- Well, she may be pretty, but Sonya doesn’t mess around with any Duma Faithful.

“I’m a southerner.” Tatiana’s voice is soft, almost assuring. “Close to the old border. The hearsay about you is that you grew up in the east. What’s more, I heard you were also raised in a church!”

Also?

“Another orphan?” Sonya sips her kvass, relishing the sweet taste of the drink after so long without it. “Rigel can’t seem to stop them from coming out of the woodwork.”

Tatiana glances to the corner of the room before looking back at Sonya. “I was… left there. Not really an orphan. Just unwanted. Unneeded. My father was-”

Sonya catches the way Tatiana’s grip on her glass tightens, the little swallow she takes, the brief flare of anger in her eyes, and she knows. She knows what it’s like to have a father that’s the scum of the earth, the absolute worst person alive. She knows what it’s like to have a father that’s more beast than man. She knows that look that Tatiana wears, because she wears it herself sometimes.

“No need to give me your whole life story, angel,” Sonya assures. “My father dumped me and my elder sisters at a Faithful priory when he got… busy.”

Tatiana’s shoulders loosen up a little; Sonya is glad that she knows that she’s with a kindred spirit. “I see… A Faithful priory. I was given away to a Halcyonist church.”

They go back to eating for a moment. The tarts on the tray are diminishing, and a little eager to diffuse the tension, Sonya comments on their delightful taste. It gets a smile out of Tatiana, which makes Sonya glad that she’s sitting, because she’s certain a smile like that would make her weak in the knees were she standing.

She observes Tatiana a little more, noticing the paint on her lips, powder on her skin, the color on her eyelids. “Makeup?”

Tatiana jumps, putting down her glass of kvass to nervously tap her cheeks. “I-is it smudging? Does it look odd? I’m so sorry!”

A jittery thing, isn’t she?

“No, I was just surprised. I’ve never known clerics or saints to wear makeup. It wasn’t allowed where I grew up,” Sonya explains.

Tatiana lowers her fingertips from her face. “Oh? I mean, it’s not incredibly common, but it’s not _not_ allowed at my church. Many of the clerics who raised me wore makeup. Maybe it’s another divide between the Faithful and Halcyonists.”

Sonya’s lip curls. “You wouldn’t be- _lieve_ the fashion disaster my priory was, darling. We all had to wear the same drab habits, and not so much as a swatch of lip paint was allowed. The priests told us that it ‘promoted sin,’ and that fashion and looks were ‘frivolities that would never assist Duma.’”

The mortified look on Tatiana’s face is cute. “Truly? I never heard such a thing when I was growing up! I mean, we all have our cleric habits for ceremony, but we’re always allowed to wear whatever we want, or put on however much makeup we’d like. It was never a policy that Father Halcyon spoke of.”

Sonya’s exasperation grows at a memory of a knobby old priest smacking her on the fingers with a ruler for wearing a splash of color. “It was the worst. There were so many other rules: Wake up exactly at 7AM, get in a straight line and get breakfast, brush our teeth, and do chores for the greater part of the day. My sisters and I barely got any free time.”

“At my church, I always had to wake up early, but nothing after that was so strict unless we had a big ceremony or processions. So long as chores got done and the altar was cleaned, I was allowed plenty of freedoms.” Tatiana drags her finger along the rim of her glass. “I knew things were bad in the east, but to treat children like that…”

“The Faithful are gone,” Sonya says sharply. “And hopefully, their practices are as well.”

“It’s a shame that the Faithful gave religious Rigelians a bad name. So many people in the Deliverance refused to trust me,” Tatiana says, a little softly. “I’m so sorry you had to live through such tyranny. I’d give you my happiness in heartbeat, were I able.”

What a soft heart; a rarity in their native Rigel. Sonya honestly wonders how she made it this far, no matter how cushy and soft her churchlife was by comparison to her own. Under the Faithful’s cultural regime, most anyone with even a flicker of kindness was snuffed out—at least in Sonya’s experience.

That, after all, is what happened to Marla and Hestia.

“I- I am expected in the clinic soon,” Tatiana says after a few moments of silence. “But, if you want… We could do this again. Just, you know. If you want.”

She’s a blushing mess; Sonya likes all women, but this type is among her particular favorites. Soft, mushy, easy to tease and get red, but with a delightful flare of strength within them.

“You call me anytime that I’m around,” Sonya invites. “Call for me, and I will come running to your side.”

Tatiana goes redder than before, and it delights Sonya more than anything else.


End file.
